prospecting for potential: unearthing the power of mining education and outreach

If you’ve ever spent time around young kids, you know they can’t help picking up every cool pebble they see and excitedly investigating it. Children are naturally curious about the world around them, from the smallest pebble to the largest mountains. At MineralsEd, we aim to inspire and nurture that innate drive to understand our natural environment by providing students and teachers across B.C. with high-quality and comprehensive educational materials on geoscience and mining.

Established in 1991 as a teacherindustry partnership, MineralsEd is a non-partisan, charitable organization that focuses on K-12 teacher and student geoscience and mining education. MineralsEd offers a variety of in-classroom and virtual workshops, teacher and student field trips, activity books, online events and activities, and community outreach events. Over the 2022-2023 school year, MineralsEd has directly supported over 280 teachers and 2100 students, reaching 35 different communities across B.C., Canada, and internationally.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, MineralsEd continued to deliver valuable educational content across the province, adapting many of our in-person workshops and resources into virtual formats, including our popular Junior Geologist Classroom workshops and Intermediate Teacher Pro-D workshops. Even with lifting restrictions, we continue offering our virtual workshops and resources to better serve remote communities across B.C. and Canada. We recently provided a virtual Pro-D workshop to teachers in places such as Powell River and Revelstoke, and a virtual Career Series for secondary students in Salmon Arm, Quesnel, Hazelton, Prince George, and Revelstoke.

We are looking forward to the 20232024 school year and the addition of our first full-time partner-teacher to our staff, who will design new workshops and update our current resources. This will significantly increase our capacity to facilitate classroom workshops for schools across B.C. We will also be fully implementing our new careers program, “Mining 101: A Career in the Minerals Industry,” which addresses low post-secondary enrollments in geoscience and mining programs in institutions across Canada and the upcoming skills gap in the minerals industry. This program will support career education in mining districts across the province. We have partnered with career educators in school district 83 to develop a comprehensive career education program that will introduce secondary students across the province to the various career paths available in the minerals industry. This program includes a career panel with industry professionals from trades and science backgrounds, followed by field trips to active mines and exploration sites. The program finishes with a trip to tour a local post-secondary institution, highlighting the variety of educational pathways to a rewarding career in the minerals industry.

With the support of industry and education partners, we will be developing a range of new and improved resources to educate and inspire the next generation of students on the vital role mining and mineral resources have in their lives, how the mining industry is changing and adapting to incorporate new technologies, and how to mine and live sustainably.

To find out how you or your organization can support geoscience and mining education in B.C., go to www.MineralsEd.ca. b

Students learning about the importance of Critical Minerals in Canada at the MineralsEd Mining Month Community Fair.